By Amanda Addison
It seems that one New Zealander’s plan to create a new religion has gone sour. An e-mail circulating in New Zealand, Australia, and England began in March as an effort to urge those who didn’t identify with conventional religions to tell statisticians that they adhered to the “Jedi” religion. Jedis are of course knights who guard peace and justice from the highly overpopular Star Wars movies that make me want to revert to the classic California phrase: “gag me with a wooden spoon”. The email suggested that 8,000 responses would force the government of New Zealand to declare Jedi an official religion. Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out this way, to the disappointment of Star Wars fans everywhere and to my own personal delight.
According to Wired.com, New Zealand’s census manager Frank Nolan said that those who answered “Jedi” in the question of religion might just be recorded as “beyond the scope”. And despite the claims of the mass forwarded e-mail that flooded mailboxes, sheer numbers (or dorks in large groups) do not create new religions. An existence of a formal organizational structure rather than a number of responses is necessary for Jedi to become an official religion.
On has to seriously wonder about those who claim to be Jedis. Unfortunately, it goes beyond college campuses where Star Wars geeks cluster together for lunch to discuss the current bidding of a Weequay on the freeze frame figure. People are actually turning to Star Wars for spirituality. Our world is truly in a sad state when movies begin to dictate belief in the supernatural. When census officials said that those who entered Jedi as their religion may be subject to prosecution for entering false information, the self-proclaimed Jedis were spurred further. Luke Housego said in an email, “The Australian Bureau of Statistics responded by threatening fines to people who put ‘Jedi’ as their religion. Many of us then considered what this meant. We feel we are Jedi. Star Wars gave us our spirituality. It is the basic text that, when learning the Bible, Torah or whatever, we referenced to for a concept of a deeper self. Obi-Wan taught me mysticism, not St. John of the Cross.”
Apparently the threat of prosecution is highly unrealistic. A census spokesman in England told the BBC that “If 10, 10,000 or 50,000 people put Jedi in the ‘other’ section of the census, it’s not going to be reflected in the output. In the last census, where we asked for a religion, lots of people who obviously don’t have a religion put their football team. But it doesn’t matter whether you put Jedi, Manchester United, Chelsea, or whatever. It’s completely erroneous, it’s going to have no impact whatsoever.” This is because only the one hundred or so religions listed on the form will be tallied individually. Everything else placed in the “other” box will only be tallied as other.
So I would like to extend my condolences to Star Wars fans everywhere, and I know that you’re hurting right now. In light of that, I promise not to make fun of you for at least . . . a half hour. A good half hour. This doesn’t mean that engineers are off the hook.
